Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/130

116 the kettle, afterwards stirring it with her wooden spoon. That done, she brought forth two stones, one flat with a hollowed space in  one surface and the other somewhat pear-shaped and smaller. Into the hollow of the larger stone she dropped a few kernels of  corn, taken from a leather pouch, and began  to crush them, holding the pear-shaped stone  by its smaller end and dropping it on the  grain with a circular movement of her thin  brown wrist. When the corn was broken to her liking, she scooped it forth onto a  piece of birch bark and dipped again into  the pouch.

While she was so occupied, a rather stout Indian emerged from the wigwam, stretching  and yawning, and, after blinking a moment  at the sun, seated himself with his back to  a lodge-pole and leisurely filled the small  bowl of his long blue-clay pipe. When it was ready he spoke to the woman and she,  leaving her rude mortar and pestle, picked  a hot coal from the fire with her bare fingers  and gave it to him. Unconcernedly he took it from her, though it glowed so brightly  that David could see it in the sunlight, and  held it to the pipe-bowl. Then, emitting streamers of smoke from his nostrils, he